Footy Players - good athletes?

An open letter to Bruce McAvaney

Dear Bruce,

As a some time decathlete and regular competitor at local interclub, I am asking you whether, in your role as anchor for the the AFL coverage, you could let it be known that today's footballers are not, in fact, the athletes your fellow comentators declare them to be.

Each week at the Glenhuntly venue Hawthorn footballers are out and compete in a variety of events and, in almost all cases, are getting beaten by B,C or D grade athletes who come in all shapes and sizes. These are professional sportsmen who cannot beat the most part time of part timers in anything! I realise that your fellow comentators are not declaring them to be track and field athletes in particular, but they are inferring that these guys are super quick, super strong and possess great leaping abilities. An afternoon at Glenhuntly would convince them otherwise.

As part of the masses (sarcasm there) of people who front up and beat these guys with ordinary performances of which we are still very proud, I would really like to see you guys refer to them as footballers who were good athletes. A centre half forward for a league club who cannot get over 1.55m in high jump is just a joke. At that height, you are not asking for great technique, just a bit of spring...something that Nick Holland clearly does not have. As a footballer, he rocks...just keep it in perspective please...he doesn't have much of a leap.

I know that there are a number of players going around who won state titles and the like and could have been top athletes but who wre unfortunately lost to football. But I also know state title winners who have "pied up" in the years since and are not having their name bandied about with the words "great athlete" following. A good example is Trent Croad who struggled to lift his body over 1.75 in high jump last Saturday, only a couple of years after jumping 1.95 at school. In school, it was probably fair to say that he was "a footballer who could jump a bit", now, he is just a footballer.

Shane Crawford, Australia's latest triathlon star, if you believe some local press, couldn't do better than 5th in a B-grade 100m, running 12.8 and ran an ordinary mid-field race in C-grade over 400m, where the use of blocks should not hinder him too much. With these facts in mind, can you understand how depressing it is to hear all through the footy season about how fast he is? Faster than slow footballers? Maybe. But not fast in even C-grade terms.

As the best and most public commentator in athletics, maybe you could drop a hint to the other guys in there that whilst Kouta et al were top schoolboy athletes, the chances of them repeating their effort 2, 3 or 10 years later has been taken away from them by lots of slow work and very little intense speed or explosive work. If you would like to see it for yourself, you would be welcome down at Duncan McKinnon reserve any Saturday you like...the hot dogs there are great.

I know that this is unlikely to change much...people don't want to have the perceptions of their heroes tempered by some reality, but a little bit of reality can be helpful sometimes.

Yours Truly

Justin Hanrahan

Tonza responded (I don't know if he speaks on behalf of Bruce...)

Footballers as athletes: I have no doubt that the draft camp rookies contain some fine athletes (see Prendergast, 2nd AFL triathlon for proof - he's from a great middle distance family), but I feel that AFL training takes the "spring" out of a players legs, after a few years of long pre-seasons it will be very difficult for most players to "pick it up" over 100 or 200, but you would expect some quality 400 runners around....The problem with making judgements on Crawford et al, is that currently they are in the middle of the conditioning phase of pre season, with lots of long slow work....the other problem is that with a long AFL season I don't think they ever reach a "freshening" phase where they work on their speed....after a few years of this they'll end up with the speed of me!!!

Crawford ran a 57ish 400 on Saturday, not particularly swift at all, and you would think any "quick" AFL on baller would/should be able to run <55s on the basis of strength alone. The thing is that NO AFL footballer (with the possible exception of Plugger) is a speed athlete, they are all endurance athletes....and "big" endurance athletes at that.....now lets think about an average 5000m runner we know (of the sort that would run B grade or just sneak around in State League), what would he run for 400m...probably something like 57....NO-ONE would say he's a superb speed athlete, just a good endurance athlete, and that's what AFL footballers are.

The thing is that to be a "quick" AFL footballer doesn't require you to cover 100m quickly it requires you to be able to accelerate quickly over 5-10 m from a jog (not from standing), then recover and then accelerate again, like a whole series of very short "ins and outs", not necessarily something a B grade 5km runner would be good at....

I don't know where this is going but what I can say is that I have no doubt many AFL footballers have been very good track (and field) athletes in their younger days, but lots of "LSD" over many years has slowed them down, and guys who could run sub 11 no longer have that speed in them....

and let's not forget...they end up "RUNNING LIKE FOOTBALLERS!!"

yeah you all know what I mean.....not one of them covers the ground like Coe, or Kipketer, or Gebreslaisse or Kipkosgei...